who were formerly your equals, or even your inferiors. You have tasted the nauseating bitterness of poverty, I might almost say of want. Incessant drudgery, the contumely and insolence of hard-hearted task-masters, the degrading beleaguerment of duns, coarse and scanty fare, an abode of which you were ashamed, apparel that compelled you to shun your former acquaintance for fear of being shunned by them, privations and self-denial, and all the unutterable loathsomeness of penury, immeasurably aggravated by being shared with those whom you loved the most tenderly, have oppressed your body and soul, until your spirit is almost broken, and your head is bowed down with despondency. If these are hard to bear now, now that you can at least earn the sorry pittance on which we subsist, how intolerable will they become when sickness or age shall have incapacitated you for exertion, and you will have no prospect before you but a miserable

death in a poorhouse, embittered by the reflection that you are leaving your family utterly destitute!"

"What is the use," sighed Lomax, in a querulous tone," of harping upon my unhappy lot, unless you can show me how I am to avoid

it?"

"Now, Joel," resumed the wife," mark well my words, and tell me, would it not delight you to have this grinding, this withering, this oppressive weight, rolled from off your heart for ever? And not from your's alone, but from our darling Benjamin's, from mine, from Mary's? Would it not rejoice your soul to be suddenly lifted up from this slough of despond, and elevated for the remainder of your days into a station of ease, comfort, independence, wealth, such as should empower you, to raise your dejected head, and repay tenfold the scorn of those who have scorned you to command respect and homage from the proudest of those

whom we knew in our better days to have, henceforward, no other business than amusement and recreation—to occupy a handsome house-to possess carriages, horses, and servants-to banquet every day upon delicious fare and heart-rejoicing wines-to see your family participating in all these blessings-and when you are summoned hence, after a life prolonged and made happy by all the appliances of wealth, to die with the soothing certainty that those whom you have loved will follow out the same enviable career of enjoyment and independence?"

"What avails it, Jane, to tantalize me with this glorious vision, unless you can point out the means of its accomplishment? As there can be but one answer to your questions, it must be either superfluous or unfeeling to propose them with such an earnest and tempting minuteness."

"You are right; there is but one answer to

them; you would hail with ecstasy this blessed change in our fate, if it could be effected with perfect safety, without trouble, without loss of character, without imputation of any sort. Well, then, it can be so effected; with your assistance I can make you, in the course of this. very night, happy, independent, rich, all that I have promised, and more."

"You, Jane! you! How, how? I do not understand your words. You cannot be in earnest; and methinks our poverty forms but a sorry subject for a jest."

"See you this paper? It is Hoffman's will; I have just drawn it from beneath his pillow. By this instrument, which he purposes to execute to-morrow, he has left his entire fortune to his nephew Ruddock."

"I am not surprised at it: some expressions, that dropped from him at Cheltenham, prepared me for this disposition of his property; but how are your wild reveries to be accom

plished by the enrichment of Edward Ruddock?"

"More than twenty times, Joel, have I heard you boast that from long practice you can so correctly imitate any law hand-writing as to deceive even the original penman. Now tell me, and before you answer weigh well all the incalculable blessings and advantages of the measure, weigh well its glorious results, as you are a man, a husband, and a father, and tell me why you should not sit up to-night and make an exact fac-simile of this will, only substituting for the name of Edward Ruddock that of our darling Benjamin?

"Good God!" ejaculated Lomax, as he started back, with a look of amazement and dismay, "forge a will! Why, it is a felony—a capital offence-a hanging-"

"Hush!" interposed the wife, placing her hand upon his mouth; "speak not so loud utter not a word, except in a whisper, I conjure,